jobbing

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of job.

   After the mill closed, he made a living jobbing wherever a day's work appeared.

   They were jobbing on the side, taking small contracts as they came.

   Note

   The -ing form carries every use of the verb job, so context decides which is meant. Without an object it can mean doing odd work for hire or turning public business to private advantage. With an object, as in jobbing securities, it means buying and selling for profit or parceling a project out to several contractors. The same spelling also serves as a noun and as the adjective in jobbing actor.

2. 2
   adjective

   Doing odd jobs or occasional work as it becomes available, rather than holding a permanent position.

   A jobbing builder handled the small repairs that the big firms wouldn't take.

   He spent decades as a jobbing actor, taking whatever roles came up.

   Similarfreelance, casual

   Note

   It stands before a noun naming a trade or profession: the jobbing foundryman, the jobbing builder, the jobbing actor. Alan Young's 2020 obituary of Sean Connery calls him "the jobbing actor and former milkman" before Dr No made him a star. The word is modest rather than contemptuous. It describes someone who takes whatever work comes, and it reads naturally in exactly such before-fame stories.

3. 3
   noununcountable

   Work done one task at a time and paid by the piece rather than by salary; piecework and odd-job work.

   She took on jobbing whenever the seasonal contracts dried up.

   Much of the workshop's revenue still came from jobbing rather than long-term commissions.

   Similarpiecework

   Note

   Usually uncountable, as in took on jobbing or revenue from jobbing, but a plural exists. The Lancet in 1849 writes of "proceedings, appointments, jobbings, &c" at University College. The work is named for its unit of payment, the single job. The person who does it is described by the adjective, as in a jobbing builder.

4. 4
   noununcountable

   The practice of exploiting a public office or any other position of trust for one's own advantage.

   Reformers railed against the jobbing that turned every appointment into a favor for a friend.

   The inquiry uncovered years of jobbing in the customs house.

   Similarcorruption, graft, cronyism

   Note

   A political word with a long pedigree. Edmund Burke, in Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), calls Paris "the center and focus of jobbing." It names a practice rather than a single act, so it usually takes no article and sits naturally beside words of scrutiny and reform: years of jobbing, an inquiry into jobbing, the jobbing that reformers railed against.

5. 5
   noununcountable

   The buying and selling of stocks or goods for profit; trading driven mainly by gain rather than long-term holding.

   He grew rich by jobbing on the floor of the exchange, never holding a stock for long.

   The firm's earnings came from jobbing in commodities rather than from any productive enterprise.

   Similarspeculation, trading, dealing

   Note

   Profit is the whole point here, and the word is rarely neutral. It describes dealing for gain, not investing or producing, and it often carries a note of disapproval. That edge links it to the corrupt use of office, where the same appetite for gain turns on a public trust. Choose a plainer word such as trading when no criticism is intended.

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